Due to the global nature of today's economy, a business may interact with potential customers without having enough information regarding them. For example, a person may open a credit card account over the phone or via the internet. As used herein and unless otherwise explicitly noted, the words business, organization, user, and all forms of these words are used interchangeably. An example of an organization is a bank. Also as used herein and unless otherwise explicitly noted, the words customer, person, entity, and all forms of these words are used interchangeably. An example of an entity is a credit card applicant.
Making decisions regarding potential customers without enough information exposes businesses to unnecessary risk. The unnecessary risk may take the form of a policy violation or, in some extreme cases, take illegal forms such as non-compliance with an anti-money laundering statute. Screening solutions enable organizations, mostly financial institutions such as banks and credit card issuers, to minimize the likelihood that a potential customer poses a risk to the organization. For example, banks do not want to issue credit cards to entities deemed not creditworthy. As such, screening solutions help identify whether a potential customer is on a sanctions list, a risk to the organization's regulatory compliance requirements, a risk to the organization's reputation, a risk to commit a financial crime, and/or the like. An example of a screening solution is Thomson Reuters Accelus™ suite of solutions including the World-Check® database. World-Check® risk screening reveals risk hiding in business relationships and human networks. See www.accelus.thomsonreuters.com/solutions/screening/world-check. For example, World-Check® has identified hundreds of entities prior to their appearance on the Office of Foreign Assets Control list. The ability to identify entities on the Office of Foreign Assets Control list is important because “[t]he Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on US foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries and regimes, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and other threats to the national security, foreign policy or economy of the United States.” http://www.treasury.gov/about/organizational-structure/offices/Pages/Office-of-Foreign-Assets-Contro.aspx.
The use of screening solutions minimizes risk by permitting organizations to search for information regarding potential customers. If the potential customer poses an unacceptable risk based upon use of the screening solution, the organization (e.g., a World-Check® user) may take a number of actions. For example, the organization may: (1) decline to conduct business with the potential customer; (2) may enter into a business relationship with the potential customer only if the potential customer is willing to accept, e.g., a less favorable interest rate, thus compensating the organization for the additional risk; or (3) take some other action based upon the organization's policies.
Screening solutions do, however, come with the challenge of efficiently managing the time required by different people to ensure research excellence. As stated by Thomson Reuters' Accelus™ business with respect to World-Check®:                [i]t is the human element in our systematic approach that is key to the high quality of our intelligence. Raw data is gathered by researchers and automated software and is processed through a series of rigorous guidelines that have been developed as the industry has matured over the last decade. This ensures that the structured intelligence you receive is a product of both advanced technology and a carefully considered process brought about by human interaction. It is this human element that allows us to make further connections between subjects and other business or family relationships, uncover terror networks, and generally increase the relevance of the intelligence offered. Software alone cannot offer this level of research sophistication—people find what machines overlook.http://accelus.thomsonreuters.com/sites/default/files/L-373292.pdf. Both people on research teams working for information solution providers and users of screening solutions face issues of efficiently managing their time. These issues are described in the subsequent two paragraphs.        
First, it takes a great deal of time for a team of researchers to monitor local, national and international media to identify instances of entities involved or connected to illegal and/or undesirable acts. Acts of particular interest may include financial crimes, terroristic acts, and the like. The research team creates a structured data profile for each entity. The team of researchers indexes the structured data profiles. This enables World-Check® users to scan their customer databases for occurrences of these entities and to take appropriate action (e.g., exiting the customer relationship, marking the customer as high risk and subjecting the customer to stringent monitoring, etc. . . . ) for each such occurrence identified. Appropriate actions will be dictated by the individual policies of each World-Check® user. Most, if not all, World-Check® users have policies that require the World-Check® users to react to identification of occurrences by, e.g., exiting the customer relationship or designating the customer as “high risk” and subjecting the customer to stringent monitoring.
Second, due to at least the issues associated with disambiguating potential customers from one another (e.g., “Is this the ‘Mark Roberts’ for which I am looking?”), it also takes time for organizations (e.g., World-Check® users) to search “adverse” media (e.g., sourced from Thomson Reuters Newsroom data) that indicate that their potential customers may be involved in activities where there is a risk to the organization in doing business with that potential customer. These searches tend to be broader than structured data profile searches and allow organizations to conduct their own research. Organizations are typically faced with many “false positives” when conducting such searches. Organizations spend too much time on false positives.
There is a need for systems and methods that enable more efficient development and use of screening solutions.